Telecommunication systems and methods therefor

A telecommunication system comprising:

• a telephone switch having at least one incoming line;
• an audio processing unit to receive incoming audio communications from a user and to provide outgoing audio communications to the user;
• a gateway unit, coupled to the audio processing unit, having at least one line to communicate with an electronic network;
• and
• a control unit, in communication with the audio processing unit, to switch a call received from the user to the at least one line directed to the electronic network.

A telecommunication system comprising:

• a telephone switch having at least one incoming line and at least one outgoing line;
• an audio recognition unit to receive incoming audio communications from a user and to provide outgoing audio communications to the user;
• a local area network coupled to the audio processing unit;
• and
• a control unit, coupled to the local area network, to switch a call received from a user to an outgoing line directed to number other than that which the user originally called.

A telecommunication system comprising:

• a telephone switch having at least one incoming line and at least one outgoing line;
• a response unit to receive incoming audio communications from a user and to provide outgoing audio communications to the user, the response unit including a text-to-speech unit to convert textual information into voice communications that are provided to the user;
• and
• a gateway server to receive textual information from a destination of a content provider and to provide the textual information to the text-to-speech unit.

A method of providing telephone communication service to a user comprising the steps of:

• receiving an incoming call from a user;
• connecting the incoming call to an audio processing unit;
• receiving audio commands from the user;
• processing the audio commands received from the user;
• providing audio messages to the user in response to the audio commands from the user;
• obtaining a first audio request from the user;
• determining whether the first audio request corresponds to one of a plurality of parties stored in a database;
• and
• placing an outgoing call directed to the one of the plurality of parties.

A method of providing content information to a user comprising the steps of:

• receiving an incoming call from a user;
• connecting the incoming request to an audio processing unit;
• obtaining a first audio request from the user;
• comparing the first audio request to stored data to determine a destination for the content information;
• retrieving the content information from the destination;
• translating the content information to a voice communication;
• and
• providing the voice communication to the user.